Nelson's Linkblog 2011-02

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Getting to know Scala

Nice notes from someone just starting out in Scala

2011-02-28 java • netty • programming • scala

Various options for perpetual motion, infinite energy, and limitless locomotion

2011-02-28 4chan • funny • physics • troll • via:kastang

Mike Bostock of Protovis and Polymaps fame has a new Javascript library. It's sort of like jQuery, but good at SVG too

2011-02-28 javascript • jquery • polymaps • protovis • svg

Crazy Libyan childhood

Interesting story of a son of a dissident growing up in a difficult way

2011-02-27 libya • school • via:metafilter

Fake Reed College

scam website copies from my alma mater

2011-02-27 college • education • reed • scam • via:metafilter

Canon Lens Work III

Amazing book on camera lens design; free for download!

2011-02-27 canon • lenses • optics • photography

Breast milk ice cream

As usual, NMA goes all the way and then some with their coverage

2011-02-26 animation • breastmilk • food • funny • icecream • nma • wtf

Taliban vs. tea party

A small kid's puzzle

2011-02-26 hate • politics • taliban • teaparty

My photo smiling back at me

Goofy story: Justin finds his own tourist photograph in a tourist brochure when he revisits the site seven years later

2011-02-26 copyright • creativecommons • photos • tourism

Simple tool for finding camera lenses with specific properties

2011-02-26 cameras • lenses • photography

Google, Facebook, and Twitter

Reflection on how various Internet companies are playing their role in the civil unrest sweeping the world

2011-02-25 civilliberties • facebook • freedom • google • revolution • twitter

Minter's new iPhone game. He's such a thoughtful game designer

2011-02-25 games • ios • iphone • minter • robotron

Identities (Google)

Nice post explaining the difference between anonymous and pseudonymonous

2011-02-25 google • identity • privacy • security

Google Recipe Search

Crazily specific Google search product

2011-02-25 cooking • food • google • recipes

Scraping The Daily

Andy breaks down how he built his unauthorized index of the iPad newspaper

2011-02-25 hacking • http • ipad • journalism • news • thedaily

Beautiful abstract maps of major river systems

2011-02-25 design • maps • rivers

GitHub architecture

2009 notes on building it to be fast

2011-02-25 architecture • git • github • http • performance • server • ssh

Activision patches

A bit of retrogamer nerd nostalgia

2011-02-24 2600 • activision • atari • games • patch • reward

Crazy sexy party game

2011-02-24 funny • games • sex • wii

Clean. Simple. Wet.

2011-02-24 apple • funny • parody

Prime number density

The probably that X is prime is roughly 1/log x

2011-02-24 math • numbers • primes

Historical METAR data

Company sells a DVD of weather history going back to 1930

2011-02-24 forecast • metar • weather

Incomplete code for supporting iPhones, etc in Polymaps

2011-02-23 ios • iphone • javascript • maps • polymaps • software

Yahoo acquisition failures

Great writeup of a bunch of startups screwed by being bought by Yahoo. To be fair, Google has a similar body count, albeit with some successes too

2011-02-23 acquisition • delicious • flickr • google • mybloglog • startups • upcoming • yahoo

Hardware solution for using wireless sensors with an iPhone. Fitness apps, mostly.

2011-02-23 ant+ • hardware • iphone • sensors • temperature • wireless

Better way to find stuff for streaming on Netflix

2011-02-22 interface • movies • netflix • tv

Sarah Palin's Facebook sockpuppet, pathetically 'Liking" her own comments

2011-02-22 facebook • politics • sarahpalin

GNS 430W approaches

Detailed nerdy blog post about how to best use a Garmin GPS to fly an approach, avioding the vectors to final mess

2011-02-22 aviation • garmin • ifr • navigation

Americans killed by Somali pirates

Very unusual; the last thing the pirates want is dead hostages

2011-02-22 boating • murder • piracy • somalia • yachting

Making a first game

Nice, honest notes from someone who wrote and released his first game

2011-02-21 flash • games

New concurrency library in Python 3.2, seems well thought out

2011-02-21 code • concurrency • python • threads

A lovingly detailed history of punctuation in written text

2011-02-21 punctuation • text • via:markpilgrim • writing

Golden Gate Bridge

Awesome aerial photo

2011-02-21 aerial • california • ggb • goldengatebridge • photography • photos

Roku Channel Database

Some sort of semi-hidden Roku feature, extra channels

2011-02-20 roku • streaming • television • tv

SSH + Google two factor

Apparently the authentication software is open source and able to plug in to SSH

2011-02-19 authentication • google • libpam • passwords • ssh • twofactor

Amazing collection of historical data on weather

2011-02-19 aviation • data • history • metar • weather

Awesome drag queen

Nice photographer's story of getting to know a fearless drag queen

2011-02-19 cyonflare • drag • dragqueen • gay • newyork • photography

Background on San Francisco's unusual and unenforced 1.5% tax on employee stock options

2011-02-18 isos • options • sanfrancisco • taxes

NSA official goes on the record saying they didn't put a backdoor in DES. We do know they strengthened it against differential cryptanalysis, which at the time was only known inside NSA

2011-02-18 civilliberties • crypto • des • nsa • privacy • security

Astonishing image of two photos at minimum vertical separation

2011-02-18 aviation • gps • photo • planes • rvsm

Obama / Silicon Valley photo

Amazing photo of half the titans of the Internet dining with President Obama

2011-02-18 google • obama • oracle • photo • politics • twitter

Sunfire Thunderbird

Straight-up interview with a guy very in to new age spirituality

2011-02-18 gay • lakota • newage

Popsci article claiming it's natural to be up in the middle of the night

2011-02-18 insomnia • science • sleep

Appreciation for the guy who wrote the original Castle Wolfenstein game

2011-02-18 apple • games • microprose • muse • silaswarner • wolfenstein

A simple, small script for loading Javascript late to make pages appear faster

2011-02-18 code • javascript • lab.js • optimization

Former Google chef runs a business catering to startups

2011-02-17 dining • food • google • square • startups • twitter

Degraded web browser

2011-02-16 8bit • safari • via:waxy • webbrowser

Dissertation Haiku

Spend 7 years and 300 pages, but really a haiku is all it takes

2011-02-16 funny • haiku • phd • research • students • via:waxy

Christian gene identified

Finally, an explanation of why some people are Christian

2011-02-16 funny • gay • genetics • parody • via:ian

Egypt Internet shutdown

Some details on how it happened

2011-02-16 egypt • freedom • internet • tcpip

Facebook data debacle

1.2M users' Facebook data released, not sufficiently anonymized

2011-02-15 data • facebook • privacy • research

Vintage surgical tools

Beautiful fine metalwork

2011-02-15 antiques • medicine • surgery

Yearly event where the evil space pirates make life miserable for carebear miners in Eve Online

2011-02-15 ccp • eveonline • games • mmos • pvp

For the Cat is King

2011-02-14 cat • cherubs • via:metafilter

Sanborn typography

Beautiful front plates from the fire insurance maps

2011-02-14 design • insurance • sanborn • sanbornmaps • typography

Interesting profile of what some ex-Facebook people are doing, and more generally about Silicon Valley startup culture

2011-02-14 entrepreneurship • facebook • google • paypal • startups

Zynga worth billions?

Rumour of $400 million in profit last year

2011-02-14 games • investment • valuation • zynga

Bouvet lifeboat

Wonderfully researched article about a mysterious lifeboat on a remote Southern Ocean island

2011-02-13 bouvet • bouvetisland • mystery • ocean • sea

Courgette binary diff

Google wrote a binary diff specific for Chrome updates; disassembles code to detect internal pointer changes

2011-02-13 bsdiff • chrome • courgette • diff • google • patch

Google Maps coordinates

Visual demo of various URL formats for slippy map tiles

2011-02-13 bing • coordinates • crs • google • maps • openstreetmap • projection • slippymaps • tms • visualization

Voynich dates 1404-1438

Someone finally carbon dated the mysterious manuscript

2011-02-12 voynich

Password Chernobyl

eHarmony, other companies have had their user databases compromised

2011-02-11 badtech • eharmony • passwords • security

Astonishingly honest memo from head of Nokia acknowledging their entire company is in peril

2011-02-11 apple • ceo • google • iphone • leadership • mobile • nokia

Adobe's failed handing of cross domain security results in security exploits in every major web framework

2011-02-10 adobe • badtech • csrf • flash • security

1970s robot dragonfly

Crazy bit of miniature spycraft

2011-02-09 robots • spies • uavs

#! URLs considered harmful

Fantastic writeup of why the new #! style that's popular with the Ajax kids is bad for the Web

2011-02-09 ajax • gawker • twitter • web

Interesting images of plan views of cities sorted

2011-02-09 cities • maps • urban

Kokogiak knocks one of the first posts out of the park

2011-02-09 egypt • journalism • kokogiak • photography • photos

Sony breaks own DMCA

Sony PR flack retweets a 160 bit number without knowing it's the key to his company's locks

2011-02-09 funny • hacking • playstation • sony • twitter

In Focus photoblog

The guy behind The Big Picture moved to the Atlantic, here's his new effort. Bigger pictures!

2011-02-09 journalism • news • photography • photos

Super Bowl tweets / second

Nice fine grained graph of Twitter activity during the game

2011-02-09 statistics • superbowl • twitter

Donate to a pirate!

Some guy who does game, audio, and video releases is asking for Paypal

2011-02-09 paypal • piracy • theft

AdSense for Maps

ads float on top of the map

2011-02-09 ads • google • maps

Copyrighted DCMA takedown

Someone tries to prevent Google from posting a DMCA takedown request by claiming the takedown is copyrighted

2011-02-08 chillingeffects • copyright • dmca • google • oubouros

Even simple dumb games can be improved

2011-02-08 apple • games • iphone • solitaire

iTunes setup difficulty

iPhone app developer notes how hard it is to set up a new iTunes account

2011-02-08 accounts • badtech • foreflight • itunes

RIP Tura Satana

She was truly awesome in Faster Pussycat

2011-02-06 actors • movies • obituary • russmeyer

Engine failure in IMC

Amazing recording of a pilot handling an engine failure in bad weather

2011-02-06 airplane • atc • aviation • emergency • flying • imc

Nice writeup of test flights of a completely autonomous aircraft

2011-02-06 airplanes • drone • flying • uav • ucav • x-47b

Antisocial software

Use Foursquare data to figure out how to avoid all the hipsters

2011-02-05 data • foursquare • location • via:waxy

Generate goofy diacritics over ASCII text

2011-02-05 4chan • ascii • text • unicode

Danny Sullivan on Binggate

Evenhanded examination and opinion on Microsoft, Google, and search copying

2011-02-05 bing • google • search

Research tool for turning free text data into something tabular for analysis

2011-02-04 data • processing • protovis • stanford • via:metafilter • visualization

WebGL now in Chrome

3d rendering comes to the web browser

2011-02-04 3d • chrome • google • graphics • webgl

timezone appreciation

Nice examples of erudition in the time zone database

2011-02-04 olson • time • timezone • unix

Timezone database future

The Timezone database maintainer is retiring; what happens to all the work he's done?

2011-02-04 internet • software • time • timezones • via:raffi

Matt Cutts on Binggate

Thoughtful commentary on the allegation that Bing is copying Google results

2011-02-04 bing • google • search • seo

Enjoy your geocentric universe

2011-02-04 astronomy • copernicus • tycho • via:jwz

Why Minecraft succeeds

Great insight into why this weird indie game has been a winner

2011-02-03 games • marketing • minecraft

The Daily: web version

Andy Baio supplies the missing home page for the new iPad newspaper

2011-02-03 ipad • murdoch • news • thedaily

Capable HTTP proxy for debugging code. Does SSL, simulates slow links, etc

2011-02-03 code • debugging • http • https • programming • proxy • ssl • via:waxy

Apple app store piracy

Some jerk is selling a game illegally on Apple's app store, claiming it's OK because the code is open source. The assets aren't.

2011-02-03 apple • games • piracy

Nice rundown of modern web server techs in use at Quora

2011-02-03 python • quora • software • via:mcroydon

State of the porn market

Summary of how Internet porn sites are doing

2011-02-02 internet • porn • sex • via:waxy

Games about games

Andy's big roundup of metagames

2011-02-01 games • gaming

Bing is Now Google

Evidence that Microsoft has been copying Google search results

2011-02-01 bing • cheating • google • microsoft • search

Egypt Google searches

Google maps shows the flatlining of Egypt's Internet

2011-02-01 egypt • freedom • google • internet